Angie picked up her spoon, but her face didn’t relax. Peanut pushed his bowl away, scowling.

Tanya circled the living-cooking-sleeping space, jiggling shelves, drawers, twitching a corner of the T-shirt tacked over the sole window. Bingo. Fresh cracks spidered the edge of the glass. Another call to the landlord. Another repair to be ignored. Tanya rooted in a drawer for duct tape.

“I don’ wanna go to Miz Brooks today,” Peanut whined.

“I don’ wanna work today, neither. But I am. And so are you, Arthur John.”

Angie put both bowls in the sink and wandered to the window. She lifted the ragged T-shirt.

“Don’t it look like a hymn, Mama? Like the glass at St. Dominic’s.”

The splintered glass reshaped the chaos outside, kaleidoscope fashion. A school bus, a broken-down turquoise Firebird, the limp pink flag in front of apartment 1-B. A hymn.